Now that we almost have our original domainname back, it's for lack of another reason, time for some reflection on where we're headed and what the future might hold for us. A long time ago, JGO started out as a full fledged website with this very forum as one of the many featured features. Slowly it became apparant that the community gravitated towards the forum, which steadily pushed out the remainder of the site.

In the last months of last year, some exotic features were added to JGO, like a tightly integrated wiki and a silly twitter feed, which were generally ignored by most of you beloved members. The legacy of the wiki is the Java Gaming Resources which was solely composed by kappa, for which we are forever grateful. It however showed that the current community was rather picky on which functionality it used, so instead of putting a lot of effort into even more 'useful' components, and waiting for feedback, I'm going to blatantly ask you [you][/you], what you feel you're missing on the current website.

Among other things, I might imagine a picture-of-the-week or even a demo-of-the-week, to enable the developers here to work to a goal. Combined with an archive, it might act as an one-page-showcase of all that we as a community have achieved over the years.

It's obvious that you guys know much better where you want JGO to be headed, so spill it, especially you [you], as you're among the most valued of all.

With kind regards, - Your overlord.

P.S.Anybody suggesting moving JGO over to the cloud, will be punished quite a bit.

Hi, appreciate more people! Σ ♥ = ¾Learn how to award medals... and work your way up the social rankings!

Well there are a few sort of issues, muchly surrounding the remarkable or maybe unremarkable paucity of actual games we've all managed to produce over the years. And of those not very many games there aren't all that many I really ever thought should perhaps see the light of day for fear of cringeworthy embarrassment. Now it has to be said the only reason why I ever got anywhere at all with games is because Chaz popped up at just the right time and we completely understood each other from the very beginning. I realise this is a remarkably rare thing to occur so my elevation here to the status of interesting demagogue is probably completely by chance and maybe my opinions aren't worth a whole lot. I'm not, if truth be told, a particularly brilliant programmer (as you can see when you poke through my source code), and also, I'm not even a particularly great game designer, as you'd know if you'd watched me fail repeatedly for 8 years straight before finally scratching a living independently. Except we are totally dependent on the whimsies of giant market forces such as the Humble Indie Bundle and Steam, so really, we're still complete failures in regards to my original business objective ("be an independent game developer").

So...

I just wrote a huge rant about stuff and then decided it was too negative so I've deleted it all. I'm not really 100% sure what to say.

I still wonder why there are so few Java games out there but it might have coincided with the sidelining of the desktop as the primary market for gaming and the rise of console, mobile, and web grabbing all the share. Minecraft, Runequest, Puzzle Pirates, Spiral Knights, Tribal Trouble, Revenge of the Titans - all of these games show that there's still a fortune to be made in desktop gaming if you try hard enough.

Maybe what's missing is some more in-depth articles from people at the coal face, tech gurus, and interviews and the like. Maybe even some figures. Java gaming has been all but utterly abandoned first by Sun and then by Oracle as far as anyone can tell, so it'd be nice to hear about the people using the tech successfully and delivering joy to hundreds of thousands of people or whatever. I know that a lot of people here like Julien for example are in it "for the lulz" rather than commercially but let's face it, success stories always make interesting reading.

Also what's missing is art assets for people to use when experimenting. Artists are particularly rare round these parts anyway which is a bit of a shame, but hardly surprising when you think they can make their own games in Flash and not be bothered by programmers who are obsessed over performance characteristics that frankly hardly anyone here is ever going to have to worry about, stuck as we are on the desktop largely with massive processors, RAM and GPUs.

Also, the forum could still do with more collapsing into fewer topics covering broader categories.

Among other things, I might imagine a picture-of-the-week or even a demo-of-the-week, to enable the developers here to work to a goal. Combined with an archive, it might act as an one-page-showcase of all that we as a community have achieved over the years.

I haven't been making games in java, or at all, for very long and I've been on JGO for an even shorter amount of time, but I really enjoy JGO and all the members of the community. It's not just another forum where people go and get help it's a community full of wonderful, talented, and silly people And that's one of the things I love about JGO, it's not just people scoffing at you because you don't know how to do something, and it's not just people answering something and moving on. People on JGO give input, and criticism and try to help the best that they can.

As for suggestions. I do think that getting articles, information, or interviews from people in the biz would be awesome. You might be able to get Notch to write something, he was active here if I'm not mistaken (this was before my time on JGO). It is something I would definitely read. Other than that I really don't have any suggestions other than keep up the hard work, we appreciate it a lot

I don't want to steal the spotlight from [you], but I have a couple of thoughts:

Wiki: Yeah it flopped the first time but something like that takes some time to gain momentum and some stuff really is better presented in a wiki format.

Spoiler tags: Since there's game discussion.

Collapsible tags: For people who post novels.

Grab-bag source repo: The idea of JGO hosting VC is really bad IMHO, but having a "grab-bag" source tree on something like sourceforge or googlecode or whatever is somewhat appealing. No attempt to "herd cats" or maintain anything in a reasonable form..just any contributing user dumping whatever stuff in his/her package space and that's it. Anyone looking for code in it is doing the modern version of searching through his/her grandparents attic for stuff to play with.

***DELETE MASSIVE RAMBLING DUE TO BECOMING AN EXECUTIVE AND BEING AWAY FROM THE FORUMS FOR TOO LONG***

Damnit Riven!

Chris

It honestly wasn't my intention to play with your emotions Chris. I just wanted to have some fun and give a little more incentive to posters with that personal touch, not realizing things would get emotional that quickly It was a really nice post, so the screenshot I made, will be safely stored for when I'm going to write my memoirs.

Hi, appreciate more people! Σ ♥ = ¾Learn how to award medals... and work your way up the social rankings!

I don't want to steal the spotlight from [you], but I have a couple of thoughts:

Wiki: Yeah it flopped the first time but something like that takes some time to gain momentum and some stuff really is better presented in a wiki format.

Spoiler tags: Since there's game discussion.

Collapsible tags: For people who post novels.

Grab-bag source repo: The idea of JGO hosting VC is really bad IMHO, but having a "grab-bag" source tree on something like sourceforge or googlecode or whatever is somewhat appealing. No attempt to "herd cats" or maintain anything in a reasonable form..just any contributing user dumping whatever stuff in his/her package space and that's it. Anyone looking for code in it is doing the modern version of searching through his/her grandparents attic for stuff to play with.

Hi, appreciate more people! Σ ♥ = ¾Learn how to award medals... and work your way up the social rankings!

Wow guys I never realized I had such a great impact on this community, always thought I was more of just a random person but glad that a lot of you have taken note of me, appreciate it!

As for a suggestion, I dont think I have any that will live up to the expectations you all seem to have for me, but maybe have a page for where the Featured games can be displayed in a "portal" type fashion. Which could eventually lead to some money for the site if gamers catch on to it and place some ads, or even some money for the developers and start a portal for java games right here. Although that's definitely a lot harder to do than it is to suggest.

- Anything that encourages more feedback in the Showcase section would be good. (Auto-award of medals maybe, but that would be easy to abuse.) I reckon other game developers are as needy as I am (especially [you] ).

- Find a popular 'pixel art' forum and offer to host it. Then - you know, for efficiency reasons - gradually merge it with JGO. (If that tactic works for big companies...)

- Anything that encourages more feedback in the Showcase section would be good. (Auto-award of medals maybe, but that would be easy to abuse.) I reckon other game developers are as needy as I am (especially [you] ).

- Find a popular 'pixel art' forum and offer to host it. Then - you know, for efficiency reasons - gradually merge it with JGO. (If that tactic works for big companies...)

Simon

This seems like really good ideas, well at least the first one XD A bit more focus could probably be put on the actual games and gameplay, where as now it seems it's all about programming (which of course should always be the main focus, due to the name of the forum).

More Info: https://www.ohloh.net/p/AllBinary-Platform (2.7+ million dollars and 50 man years of work it says, but as far as I am concerned it is 0 until someone give me that much or I finish my self replicating robot army)

That is about 1/3 of my code, but most of what will be opened up. I will eventually explain it all with tutorials, binaries, and such.

I have 10 games that I am working on now, and the continued opening up of my AllBinary Platform so I am not sure what my name is much less what else should change.

Personally, I would just leave it alone and focus on attracting more developers.

A revolution in Java gaming is about to happen. How can JGO benefit from the coming Robot Army Revolution? Well hell if I know, but you might add another site for RTS game integration for Java 3D printing, robots, and resource collection. Something like java-rts-game-programming-for-real.com would be stupid, but I am sure you will think of something.

I'm trying to think of some cunning post that will turn the tables on the joke and make me look like a total genius but unfortunately I can't figure out something witty to say

Cas

Don't worry, I think most of us had already written some sorts of reply before realizing there was something funky about this thread. Now the joke is on Riven, people don't want to post their opinions because they don't want to look like self-eccentric fools

Here's a suggestion then: How's about we all have a whip-round to get Excelsior to port JET to ARM architectures? Apparently it'll take a low five-figure dolloar sum to pay for it. We could have like a Blue Peter appeal on the front page at the top

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